


damage control

by violaeade



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5093174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violaeade/pseuds/violaeade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>' “Let me in, Maya,” he asks of her, so simply and softly that she feels her heart tug towards him. “If you want to, let me in.”</p>
<p>She wants to. '</p>
<p> </p>
<p>or, that time Maya's dad comes back and she needs to talk about it with Lucas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	damage control

**Author's Note:**

> pHEW i heard some spoilers that Kermit will be in town in the next episode, and I needed to get some thoughts written down before that happened. this is my first venture into writing for GMW--let me know what you think :)

Maya isn’t in her seat when the bell rings. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal—Maya skipping class isn’t unheard of—but today something feels wrong. There’s an uncomfortable weight in Lucas’ chest when Mr. Matthews walks in, cuts a glance at Maya’s empty desk, and his shoulders sag a little. Lucas watches Mr. Matthews exchange a melancholic look with Riley, who sits with her hands folded and stares straight ahead, and the feeling gets heavier. They know something.

_Where’s Maya?_ She was in class yesterday, leaning her arm on his desk and nudging his books closer to him like she always does, even after whatever happened between them in Texas. She’d been right in front of him, distracting him and calling him names less than twenty-four hours ago. Now there’s a notable absence in her place, and it’s like Mr. Matthews just tries to brush past it as he starts his lesson. Lucas doesn’t like it.

He debates asking Riley what’s going on, since things have been kind of awkward between them lately, but he goes for it in the end.

“Riley?” he whispers, leaning out of his seat a little.

She stiffens slightly at his voice—slightly enough that he only _just_ notices it—before she turns in her chair. “What?”

“Where’s Maya?” The words come out quick, as if that’ll make it sting any less.

He knows how Riley feels. He’s gotten better at reading her over the last few years, and she was never as clever as she thought about hiding her feelings. He knows she still likes him, no matter how often she says she’s fine with whatever’s happening between him and Maya, and he doesn’t want to hurt her. But he does, just a little, when he asks her about Maya. It’s another hole in what used to feel like the airtight story of Riley and Lucas: here he is, very obviously worried about Maya, and there she is, finally understanding what’s going on.

She looks down for a second, and her voice sounds about as mournful as he’s ever heard when she says, “Her dad came back.”

*

Maya doesn’t know where to go. She could stay home, but she can’t stand to look at him for more than a few minutes, and the look on her mom’s face is making her feel sick. She could go to school, but then there’s the danger of cracking under the jabs that her classmates take about her home life. She can’t break down now, or she’d never pull herself back together again. She could go to Riley’s, but as much as she loves the Matthews’, she can’t stand their pity and wholesomeness right now.

So she’s standing on the end of his block, knowing school will let out soon and he’ll be home, and wondering what will happen if she’s still around when that happens. She’s leaning against one of the buildings, her arms crossed and her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. At every approaching footfall, she looks up, both anxious and longing to see his face, but it’s never him.

With every stranger that passes, she feels more and more pathetic and jams her hands in the pockets of her jeans. Despite the sadness welling up inside her, she still manages to smile faintly at the paint stains she notices on the jeans; they’re the ratty old ones she wears when she paints at home, so she doesn’t wreck her nice ones. They’re her favourite pair.

It’s as she’s reminiscing about the origins of the different stains that Lucas finally walks by, and she doesn’t even notice until he’s right in front of her.

“Maya?” he asks, his voice softer than it usually is, and her gaze snaps up from her pants.

A smirk that’s almost convincing stretches across her face. She doesn’t even know why she decides to pretend with him, since she thinks she’s here to talk about what’s going on, but the instinct to push away instead of pull closer has stuck with her over the years. “Hey, Ranger Rick. Good day at school?”

He laces his fingers around the strap to his satchel and frowns. “No, actually.” There’s a beat, and then he says, “I heard about why you skipped today.”

The smirk falters, and her breath hitches. Riley must’ve told him what happened.

“Well,” she manages, her voice a little scratchy. The sentence drops off there; she doesn’t know what to say next.

Lucas does. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

The urge to shoot him down is strong, but not overpowering, and she scratches at the paint on her jeans when she murmurs, “Yeah.”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

So Maya pushes off the wall and follows him down the street, trailing behind him for about half a block before he slows down a bit and lets her catch up. Their hands brush as she falls into step beside him, and they both feel that restlessness that was between them at the campfire in Texas, and the feeling lingers as they keep walking.

The trip was weeks ago, but they still haven’t quite figured out where they stand. They’ve gone on a few more dates—and they’ve fallen back into their usual repartee, thank God—but the moment still hasn’t felt resolved. But it’s hard to look for closure when they can both feel Riley watching them, and everyone else in their class for that matter, and neither of them have ever been the best at opening up about their feelings.

They walk in silence for a few minutes with only a light breeze nudging at their backs. It reaches up and plays with the ends of Maya’s hair, but she’s barely paying attention to that. She’s more focused on catching the sneaky looks that Lucas gives her every few seconds, and the way that her heart beat feels a little irregular every time he does. The looks feel like a silent conversation that they’d had plenty of times before, and the familiarity is welcome.

Eventually, Lucas clears his throat and opens his mouth. “So, your dad’s in town?”

Maya knew he was going to say it eventually, but it still knocks the wind out of her. Like that time she was goofing off at the park with Riley and she slipped off the monkey bars, and she couldn’t breathe for a minute after slamming her back into the dirt. She’s always shocked at how much words can hurt just as bad as anything else.

“Yeah, he’s back,” she admits. “He’s even sleeping on the couch.”

Lucas furrows his brow. “Your mom’s letting him do that? After everything he put her through?”

Maya holds up her index finger and twirls it at Lucas. “He’s still got her wrapped around his finger, even after all these years. Even after Shawn.”

Lucas wets his lips before asking, “What does he want?”

Maya stares straight ahead, her jaw only slightly clenched. “He says he feels bad about leaving us like he did.”

“And do you believe him?”

Maya considers this. “I don’t know. I can believe that he feels guilty for leaving, but not enough that he’ll actually want to fix anything.” An acrid taste is getting stronger in her mouth as she speaks. “Or maybe his new girlfriend won’t marry him if he doesn’t patch things up with the first family he abandoned.”

She hears Lucas exhale beside her, but she doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t want him to see the tears welling in her eyes, or the little tremble in her lip that hasn’t quite left her all day.

But apparently he wants to see, because he stops walking and grabs her arm to stop her, too. He pulls them into the entrance of an alley away from the flow of people, and he looks at her until she eventually caves and looks back. His eyes are wide and filled with concern, but they’re also ringed with the anger that’s never too far. She has the urge to paint what she sees: to find just the right colour to match the irises, and find a way to convey the heat in his expression. She stares back at him for a long time, trying to get all the details just right in her head so she can call it back later.

Lucas lets his hand slide down from her arm to her hand, twining his fingers with hers for a second before he lets go. They both look away finally, and she can feel the question brimming.

Lucas takes a breath and she can feel his eyes on her again, and she nods just a little so he knows it’s okay to ask. “What happened?”

“He’s just an ass, Lucas, that’s what happened,” she tells him, but her voice wobbles and she’s not very convincing.

“Let me in, Maya,” he asks of her, so simply and softly that she feels her heart tug towards him. “If you want to, let me in.”

She wants to.

Even though she knows that alleys are generally disgusting and filthy, she still takes a seat right there, leaning her back against the wall and propping her chin up on her knee. Lucas follows her down, and she smiles weakly before she starts talking.

“When I was really young, like maybe five or six, my dad started leaving for extended periods of time. It started out just one night on a friend’s couch after a really bad argument with my mom, but then he would leave for a couple of days, and sometimes even a week before he came back. And it started to take less and less for him to leave—my mom could tell him to stop leaving the milk on the counter and he would start yelling about how she never appreciates him, and then he’d storm out.” She closes her eyes. “I didn’t get it back then. I just knew I missed my dad, and that it was always his arguments with my mom that sent him away. So I started to blame her, probably without even knowing it at first.

“It didn’t help that he always came back with presents. I got so many stuffed animals during those months that I couldn’t even fit them all on my bed. But what I remembered the most was the few minutes right after I got sent to my room, and I could still hear them through the walls, and my mom would say ‘You know we can’t afford that right now, Kermit’ and he would just tell her that he could spend money on his daughter however he wanted. It made my mom look bad, even though she’d just spent the last week taking care of me and trying to scrape money together. But I always just saw it as my mean mom who never buys me stuffed animals like my dad does.”

Maya pauses, her finger running up and down the length of her leg, the paint splotches rougher than the jeans under her skin. Lucas just watches her. They both know she’s stalling and catching her breath, but he doesn’t prod and she appreciates it.

She swallows hard and her voice is thicker than before when she says: “One day, he just never came back. It’d been two weeks since he left, which was longer than he’d ever stayed out, and everyday I would rush home from school so sure that my dad would be home with another stuffed animal. He never was.

“When I got older, I used to yell at my mom for letting me just keep getting my hopes up, but I think she just wanted to hold onto as much hope as she could, too.” Maya sniffles once. “After about six weeks, I gave up. And then my mom needed to start taking extra shifts to keep us going and then even _she_ wasn’t there when I got home from school, and I got so mad, Lucas, I got so _mad_. I didn’t know what to do with all that anger when I was so young, so I took it out on my mom.”

There are some tears spilling onto Maya’s cheeks quietly now, and Lucas scoots closer and offers his shoulder. Maya smiles gratefully at him and tries to hold back tears at the same time, and she hugs his arm to her chest as she leans against his shoulder.

“Maybe a year later, he called me. He called and said he wanted to see me, and I was so stupid and said I’d go visit him in North Carolina, where he’d wound up. My mom couldn’t say anything that would convince me not to go, and he picked me up in an old, blue car and drove me all the way to his new house. He hadn’t told me he had a new family. It hurt so much when I walked into his house and met his girlfriend and her son, Nathan, because even then I understood that he’d chosen them over me.”

Lucas’ chest feels hollow. “Maya—”

“It’s okay. He chose a new family over me and it hurt, but I thought I could handle it. And I could, until I asked Nathan what presents my dad had bought for him after he went away for a few days, and Nathan had no idea what I was talking about.” Lucas can hear her crying now, but she keeps talking anyways. “I called my mom that night and begged her to come get me a few days early. She didn’t have a car, so she rode the bus all the way from New York to get me. I’ve never even thanked her for that, I never even t-thanked—”

“It’s okay,” Lucas soothes after Maya can’t get the words past the crying anymore. He lifts his hand and strokes her hair and lets her cry into his shoulder, and she presses closer to him and lets it all out.

“No, it’s not,” she cries, barely understandable. Her words have a franticness to them that they hadn’t had before. “Because now he’s back, and I thought I was getting over it, but I’m not, I’m not over it at all and I hate him so much but I still love him and that makes me so mad.”

She doesn’t know how to describe the way the rage filled her up so completely when she realized it was her mother who got left, just like her. It was an all-consuming rage that left her digging her nails into her palms until they bled or kicking at the walls in her bedroom until the plaster started to crumble under the constant abuse. The rage had started to dull with time, and it hadn’t been weighing on her so heavily anymore, but now he’s back and the familiar rage is back with him and making her feel so leaden that she can’t even lift her head off of Lucas’ shoulder.

He just keeps running his fingers through her hair until the crying starts to ebb, and then she’s just leaning against him and holding him close and finding comfort in the fact that he’s there with her. She feels a little bad about it, since usually she can only find this sense of comfort with Riley, but there’re just some things Riley can’t understand because her parents are together and they make enough money and they never abandon her. But Lucas can understand.

“He doesn’t deserve your love, Maya,” he whispers once she’s no longer shaking against him.

She squeezes her eyes shut. “No, he doesn’t.”

They sit for a few more minutes before Lucas can feel his own burdens clamoring to get let out. After watching Maya be as vulnerable as he’s ever seen, the stakes don’t feel as high anymore—he knows he’s safe.

“Have I ever told you why I got kicked out of my old school?” he asks.

“No,” she says into his shirt. “But other people talk.”

He feels deflated before he even begins.

“If you want to tell me, I’m listening,” she ventures, her voice less rough than it had been a few minutes ago.

He smiles, a little sad, but he’s ready to tell her. “You remember that one time we all wrote down our flaws on our foreheads?”

“You wrote _Mr. Perfect_ on yours,” Maya recalls.

“Yeah, well, back in Texas I wouldn’t have considered the nickname a flaw at all. It was what I aspired to be, and it was what my parents expected me to be. Anything less than perfection wasn’t good enough.” He blows out a long breath. “I was doing pretty well keeping myself in the right place until I fell off Judy the Sheep and suddenly I was this disgrace to the family, and my parents could hardly look at me. They barely spoke to me for a few days, and I felt to worthless and furious but I bottled it all up and just kept trying to crawl back to the top.

“But once I’d had a taste of that fury, it became easier and easier to get mad about other things. Smaller things. Like not being picked first for kickball or something. But I kept bottling things up, because that was all I knew how to do, and it wasn’t until the middle of the sixth grade that I figured out a way to let it out.”

“What happened?” Maya asks, still wrapped around his arm and her face still buried in his shoulder.

“Some kids starting picking on Zay, because he’s black and we were in Texas and kids can be cruel. I got in the face of this one kid—Jonathon, I think—who wouldn’t stop taunting him, and when he clenched his fist like he was gonna throw the first punch, I acted on instinct. I knocked him out cold pretty much immediately.” Lucas swallows, his Adams apple bobbing. “I hadn’t even realized I could do that. It was scary. I remember looking down at my fist a lot in the aftermath, wondering how I could’ve done that.

“But once the shock wore off, all that was left was the adrenaline rush. And the power. I’d never felt more powerful in my life, never more in control, and I loved it.” Lucas’ voice sounds far away, like he’s falling deep into old memories. Maya squeezes his arm to bring him back.

“I got off with only a few detentions that time because there were lots of kids who said they saw Brandon saying racist stuff and I was just defending my friend. My parents could still slap on smiles and say I was just being a good person, and the image of their perfect little kid wasn’t shattered yet. But then I started getting into fights regularly, just to swing a punch or two and let the anger rush out of me for a minute.” He pauses for a second, and he keeps his eyes focused on the scattered trash in the alleyway. “I started to crave it,” he eventually confesses, his voice teeming with regret.

“I stopped pretending it was all about Zay, and I would just pick fights if I got looked at the wrong way. I started to get suspended often, and my parents could barely take it. They tried to keep it quiet, but they couldn’t cover up all my black eyes and swollen lips and bloody knuckles from everybody. People talked, my parents were mortified, and they screamed at me until they were blue in the face.”

“But that only made you angrier,” Maya says. “That was what started making you angry in the first place.”

“Right. But they didn’t get that.”

Maya finally sits up, keeping her arm wrapped around Lucas’, but she lifts her head off his shoulder. They both ignore the huge tear stain on his shirt.

“It all fell apart when I beat up a kid for literally nothing. He laughed at me as I walked by because he was this big wrestler and he thought he could take me, and I decided I’d show him who was stronger.” Lucas leans his head back against the brick wall and closes his eyes, and Maya can practically feel the regret wafting off of him. She watches the curve of his throat as he struggles to find the next words. “I ended up snapping the bone in his forearm and dislocating his shoulder. When they kicked me out, they were saying he probably wouldn’t be able to wrestle for at least a year.” Exhale. “That amount of time away from the sport is hard to bounce back from.”

This time, it’s Lucas who sniffles and has to wipe his nose.

“I’m sorry, Lucas,” Maya whispers, tightening her grip on his arm.

He looks down. “It’s okay.” He looks back over at her, their faces only a few centimetres apart. “I’m here now. I’m better here.”

“But you still wrote Mr. Perfect on your forehead,” Maya says.

He nods. “It reminds me that I’ll never be entirely perfect, and I shouldn’t make myself crazy trying to be.”

“I think that’s a good thing to be reminded of.”

They stare at each other for a long time after that, just memorizing the lines in each other’s faces and breathing the same air. It feels a little bit like that moment in Texas, except not. There’s no drama or suspense, just warmth and security and the comfort that comes from finally understanding where you stand with someone.

With that idea running through both of their heads, someone starts to lean in and the other does, too, until their lips are pressing together and it’s dizzying and electrifying, but it’s also soft and relaxing. It just feels like coming home after a long day, the weariness easing with every passing minute until contentment is all that remains. Maya shifts her body so she’s facing Lucas, and he digs both of his hands into her hair and she moves her hands from his arm to his waist, but it’s not the kiss itself that feels significant. Sure, it’s new and feels about as good as anything they’ve ever experienced, but it’s the moment right after that makes everything perfect—they pull back, lips fat and tingling from the kiss, eyes still half closed, and they start to giggle.

And it feels like the beginning of something important, maybe even something hopeful.


End file.
